Slapped by a Slab!

When God was handing out the “Silly Ideas” gene, I wasn’t down the pub with my mates having a beer and playing pool, I was camped out like an expectant January Sales shopper. This eagerness came back to bite me other evening. “Let’s make some different pot shapes” says the heart, “OK” says the brain so what do I attempt, a Hexagon! (it ended up as a Pentagon - I can’t count either).

I’ve made some “non-round” pots in the past - wobbly squares, rectangles & triangles – but never tried anything too complex by hand. After some frustration I thought I’d slab build some as I also had a larger rectangle to do as a commission. I’d done this once before at Willowbog under the guiding eye of Mr Stone Monkey himself but was confident that I could nail it on my own. I carefully rolled out my slabs and let them dry. Once I was happy I attempted my first Hexagon(sic), it seemed to work. OK, rectangle time. All was going well and I tucked my pots up to sleep as the night was getting on and the wife was getting angry.

Bright and early the next morning (unfortunately a school day) I watered my Bonsai and thought I’d check the workshop. Don’t know why, maybe I’d been burgled by slugs or something but DISASTER; I was greeted with my own Clay Lego pieces! Never before in the field of SUTEKI Accents has so much carnage be created with such little clay but there they were 4 pre-fab pots. But low, what survived the battle between the skill of the maker (or lack of in my case) and the evilness that is Terracotta? The Hexagons!! Knowing my luck they will probably blow up in the kiln taking out half of Kent with them but that’s the way my luck runs. What do they say? “If you didn’t have bad luck, you’d have no luck at all!”

So here they are, still in a green state, my first ever slab built Accent pots. OK, not quite as good as I hoped (the number of sides missing was a bit of a giveaway for starters) but hopefully a few lessons learnt. Before I start on the next ones I must a) learn to count to 6 and above, b) learn my basic shapes (do they do a “Shapes for Dummies” book?) and c) pray to the Gods of Clay for guidance and a sign. In other words concentrate on what I’m doing, understand my limitations and stop living in cloud cuckoo land!!